Nuisances.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 22, 29 May 1912, Page 10

Nuisances.

BY ONE OF THEIR VKTTIW I saw the other day an observation which. 1 am sure, has a great deal of truth in it. that golf is no longer the game it was in the good old days when it was played by the leisured few. I am not one of those who think that the whole course is made for me. but 1 must confess that some of my recent experiences on a ceriain inland course, which shall be nameless, have convinced me that the game has of late years lost much of its charm, and that we should all be the gainer by the exclusion from the links of the numberless players who seem unable to comprehend anything of the spirit of the game. Some of these bounders, for instance, don’t seem to know the difference between a player and a greenkeeper. Of course. 1 always replace any turf that I take, unless when I have knocked the divot so far that to bring it back entails the inconvenience of waiting till my caddie goes after it and brings it back. But the other day. a secretary person, dressed in a little brief authority, not only found fault with me for one of these quite venal sins of omission, but actually had the impertinence

4o grow wrathy over what he was pleased to call the way 1 left the tracks of my pugs all through the bunkers so that if anyone playing behind got into niv hoof marks his ball was absolutely unplayable." I soon turned him down though, for I just told him in so many words that if the players behind would smooth the bunkers for me. I should do the game for them. 1 rather had him there I think. Another way in which players on the course 1 speak of make themselves objectionable is by yelling ’ fore" ami indulging in all sorts of impatient antics while the couple in front are counting up their scores on the green after having holed out. The oth'r day Major Foozle ajll I weie having a hot argument ou

the green. He had taken 7, but we could not make out whether I had taken 8 or 9, and we had discussed the point for nearly’ five minutes, when the shouting of a couple of rude fellows behind put connected thought completely out of the question. So, of course, I had dimply to put down an 8 and go on. Afterwards the fellow behind —an illbred {Scotsman, with no notion of the etiquette of the green or of thoughtful ness for others asked me what the devil we meant by doing the pillar-of-salt act in the middle of the green after we had holed out. 1 ignored the offensiveness of his manner so far as to inform him of what had detained us. At which he fell into a paroxysm of simian laughter, hut afterwards demanded angrily and with several oaths what 1 was doing taking my score in a holes match, and a friendly’ at that. Now. this is just Hie sort of question that that sort of person would ask. All ihoy care for is to win their match, and scores, except in a medal round, are nothing to them. Now 1 make it my invariable practice io take my score for every round. It is the only thing that enables a player truly to appreciate his own game. That very day, for instance, 1 not only had that 8 though,

as I remembered afterwards, it really should have been 9, hut. of course, it was too late to alter it—But I had two 7’s as well and another 8, so that 1 finished in 179—two strokes below my own previous best for that links. But the biggest nuisances of all. I think, are the caddies. I left my clubs with mine the other day while 1 went in for lunch, and from the window I was disgusted to see him playing-to the firsthole with my driver and iron. lie was using an old hacked ball, but he drove it clean and easy over that hunker that 1 always have to play short of. He must have got hold of one of these new long-driv-ing balls I was hearing about. But

the club certainly seemed f<> play’ far easier in his hands than it does in mine. I told the pro. afterwards that I thought lie had sold me a club quite unsuited to my style of play, but he made some stupid joke about it being not so much a stile as a five-bar red gate, and 1 left him. Afterwards 1 came across that same caddie of mine giving an exhibition to some of his fellow bobbledyhoys of what he was impudent enough to describe as my method of driving. A more ridiculous caricature I never saw, and why’ Major Foozle, who watched the thing with tears in his eyes, should have thought of giving the young ford a bob to himself, passes me to understand.